In this issue:
Why I built Before the Demo
The gap most GTM teams aren't talking about
What this newsletter covers - and who it's for
Hi, I'm Charlene!
I've spent the better part of a decade in B2B SaaS - across email marketing, predictive analytics, product analytics, CRM, nonprofit tech, and fintech, at companies ranging from 50 to 8,000 employees. Different categories, different ICPs, different GTM motions.
One pattern showed up everywhere.
The discovery surfaces buyers actually used rarely matched the channels companies were investing in. We'd optimize for SEO, run outbound sequences, show up at conferences - and buyers were finding us through a practitioner's Slack message, an AI assistant query, a newsletter mention we didn't know existed.
Most recently, I was a founding PMM at a B2B SaaS company where I ran 72 buyer calls and built $1.81M in pipeline from scratch. That role gave me an unusually close view of the gap between assumed discovery and actual discovery - with budget consequences attached.
Then I started mapping other categories - revenue intelligence, ML observability, consumer insights, investment data automation, marketing measurement - and found the same pattern everywhere.
Most B2B SaaS companies are optimizing for discovery channels their buyers have already moved on from.
That's why I built Before the Demo.
The insight the name is built on
This isn't a hunch. The data is consistent and accumulating fast.
80% of the time, the winning vendor in a B2B deal is already the preferred vendor before first contact with sales - buyers enter the Validation Phase with a shortlist already ranked. (6sense 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report, n=4,000 buyers)
47% of enterprise tech buyers now start vendor research with an AI assistant - ahead of Google Search. (Treble/Censuswide, Press-to-Pipeline Activation in the Age of AI, 2026, n=300)
51% of B2B software buyers start research with AI search more often than Google. (G2 March 2026 survey, cited by Sydney Sloan)
94% of buyers are using LLMs in their buying process - but primarily to synthesize and compare vendors they already know, not to discover new ones. Which means if you're not in the consideration set before AI-assisted research begins, you're not getting discovered there either. (6sense 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report)
By the time your SDR sends an email, the decision is largely made. The shortlist was built in channels most vendors aren't in.
This isn't a sales problem. It's a discovery infrastructure problem.
What this newsletter covers
Every issue goes deep on one thing: where B2B buyers in a specific vertical actually discover and evaluate vendors - and where most vendors aren't showing up.
Not general GTM advice. Not trend roundups. Specific, researched, vertical-by-vertical diagnostic intelligence on the surfaces that matter and the experiments worth running.
If you're a founder trying to figure out why the right buyers aren't finding you, or a GTM leader rebuilding your discovery infrastructure for the way buyers actually behave in 2026 - you're in the right place.
Next issue: the five discovery surfaces reshaping B2B vendor evaluation right now - and which ones most teams are dramatically underinvesting in.
See you then.
- Charlene
Before the Demo maps where B2B buyers actually discover and evaluate vendors. Published by Charlene Strain.